Get Results from Systems-based Coaching

Lead Well Coaching is provided by Don Blohowiak,
a certified executive coach. Don holds a graduate certificate in
Leadership Coaching from Georgetown University, and is credentialed by the International Coach Federation.

Who I Work With

I specialize in coaching:

• Teams of executives who want to work together more effectively in leading their organization (Think: Less friction, more flow.)

• Senior executives, fast-rising managers, and accomplished professionals who:

  • Face increasing pressures or growing responsibilities in a complex environment

  • Are newly charged with higher-stakes responsibilities

  • Have been targeted for promotion

  • Are said to be "rough around the edges" in their
    people skills
    
    (My clients tend to include hard-charging executives, senior operational managers, and technically-oriented professionals: scientists, engineers, accountants...)

Outcomes to Expect from My Executive Coaching Process

• Improved results from your improved leadership

• Better relationships with all the people you work with (direct reports, peers and colleagues, customers and clients)

• Greater confidence in your own abilities

• Enhanced capacity to obtain results to achieve both what's expected of you and what you want

• More satisfaction in your work and your life

How We'd Work Together

Coaching is a series of learning conversations designed to work with your inherent strengths to help you achieve important objectives.

Usually, you and I would meet in-person one or more times a month, and by phone a few times a month, as well as exchange some emails along the way.

My preference is also to spend some time with you in your work environment, unobtrusively observing you do what you do.

My mindset as a coach: You don't need fixing. You don't need a personality transplant. You don't need to conform to some model of an idealized leader.

My goal is not to change you. After all, you're not going to be more effective if you're feeling phony and frustrated.

My objective is to assist you to build on your native strengths, to help you see new alternatives for your energy and talents, to provide you with some new methods to mix in with those you already use, and encourage you to try these new tactics, while supporting you all through the process.

Through coaching, you'll add to your repertoire not repress who you are.

How Coaching Will Impact You

Here's how coaching will help you evolve:

• Discovering and understanding yourself at a deeper level. Through self-observation and reflection, you'll gain clarity about what you already know, believe and feel. Sometimes, your own most helpful insights have been pushed aside to make room for the crushing onslaught of daily distractions. Coaching will help you to reacquaint yourself with your own best thinking by working through stimulating questions some that you may not be asking yourself, some that have been lingering unaddressed for a very long time.

• Ascertaining how others perceive you, identifying the impact of those perceptions on your effectiveness. Sometimes, others see us in ways that seem quite distorted from how we see ourselves. Using a qualitative multi-rater (360-degree) feedback process, you'll receive important insights that will provide you critical information about how you are perceived by people important to you.

• Considering helpful suggestions. While I never dictate or prescribe, I don't pretend not to have the experience that I do (see below). When it's appropriate and helpful, I'll suggest a tactic to you. What you do with that information is, of course, up to you.

• Working through action learning "assignments" to aid your growth. Sometimes, the best way for you to get the results you want is to try some new things or to do some things differently. We'll identify helpful tactics, and I'll support you as you put them into action.

• Using tools to enable the actions you've chosen to undertake. With an executive and consulting career of some 30 years behind me in a wide variety of organizations, I've developed quite a tool box. I'm delighted to dip in and share when it's appropriate.

• Remaining who you are and becoming the person you are capable of becoming. You'll reach a point where you can honestly say to yourself: "Yes, I know who I am. I'm becoming my best self. And I am living with integrity, with authenticity. I feel fulfilled in the important dimensions of my life."

A Little Different

My approach to coaching executives and teams is, admittedly, a bit different than many others.

Clients choose to work with me because:

• I do NOT do touchy-feely airy-fairy coaching. Sure, I'm a nice guy. And we're probably really going to like each other. But I'm not going to ask you for hugs or speak to you in froo-froo language that will confuse or frustrate you. (Some people really like that sort of thing and find it helpful; my clients tend not to.)

• I do NOT want to coach you forever or have you develop a dependency.
  
  My goal: Help you reach your goal so you can live your life without depending on your coach.
  
  Many of my clients do come back now and then for an assist following initial coaching. That's what I'm here for. But clients call me. I never pester or "up sell." Ever.

• I do NOT try to change you. I will make suggestions to you, but will not tell you what to do. I won't try to make you into a clone of some idealized model: You wouldn't like that. And it wouldn't work anyway.

• I do NOT approach coaching assignments with starry-eyed naiveté. My perspective is grounded in the real world. Because that's where I live and work.
  
  My real world experience includes:

  • Running businesses (large and small; for profit and nonprofit) for more than 20 years.

  • Struggling with intense competition.

  • Wrestling with competing obligations between family and work.

  • Raising kids through adulthood.

  • Hiring, firing. Re-orging. Downsizing.

  • Enduring serious illness in the family.

  • Wining. Losing. Playing the hero. And the fool.

  • Doing all the grown-up stuff.

• I trained seriously to coach executives.
  
  My formal coach training was done at the graduate level, on-site, at Georgetown University in its accredited and acclaimed Leadership Coaching certificate program. As one of the few coach training programs in the world focusing on the complexities of coaching senior managers in organizations, it draws accomplished participants from around the globe.
  
  I know a great deal about leadership -- having written and published about a million words on leadership and management issues in several books and many major publications around the world. Many top organizations have hired me to help them develop their leaders. I've been a leadership development consultant to Johnson & Johnson, FedEx, American Honda, the U.S. Marine Corps, and many other top organizations.
  
  Furthermore, I am at work on my Ph.D. in behavioral science, focusing on what drives the growth and development of already capable and accomplished adults. I have augmented those studies with additional training in developmental coaching from Otto Laske, Ph.D., Psy.D. at the InterDevelopMental Institute.

  I adhere to the Code of Ethics of the International Coach Federation to which I proudly belong as a credentialed, certified member coach.
  
  Bottom-line: When we meet to discuss your developmental needs, you'll receive the attention of someone who brings a full-range of perspective to your unique situation.
  
  Isn't that what you want?

Next Steps

If you'd like to explore the possibility of us working together with no pressure and zero obligation please call me, Toll Free in the U.S. at 1-888-LEADWELL (532-3935), or +1-434-295-6551.

I'm happy to provide a confidential, complimentary coaching consultation to see if our working together makes good sense for you. (Personal fit between client and coach is an important ingredient in coaching success.)

I am centrally located in Virginia, so I'm easily accessible to clients on the Eastern Seaboard and beyond. Truth is, many of my clients are spread across the U.S. and do much of their work with me by phone. But when it's feasible, I do like to meet with you the old fashioned way.